Media Blog

Our target audience would most likely be primarily white British female teenagers aged 16-20 years old. This is because the songs that Lizzie Calvert sings would relate to girls this age as they may have gone through the same thing, or something similar.

We asked a few teenager girls aged around 17-18 years old and played them our song. I asked them to think of words that would relate to this song and for them to write it down. This Wordle shows what they came up with and what words they felt would relate to the song. The results show that the girls we asked understood the message of the song. For example, one girl expressed that the song is inspiring for young girls that want to go into that industry. Another girl said that it speaks the truth of the music industry and how it’s based on selling your body in order to be successful. The word pain comes from the song, as one other girl said the song tells story of the pain she suffered trying to get into the industry.

We also used SurveyMonkey before we started the process of making our video, to see what they think would be good to use in a pop genre. One of the questions asked whether they would expect the music video to be narrative based or performance based. Most of our target audience expected the video to be a performance based. We took this into consideration and incorporate performance and narrative into our video. People may have chosen a performance based video because they feel it would more interested than a narrative based video as they can be dragged out a lot and may bore people. We didn’t want to incorporate too much of performance as that’s connected with the rock/punk genre whereas our genre is pop. The next question that we asked was what kind of make-up do you expect the artist to be wearing? The options were heavy/bold, naturalistic and spectacle. We had 5 responses to this question where 2 people chose naturalistic and 2 for spectacle. We incorporated this by choosing the naturalistic style of make-up for our music video. Although heavy and bold make-up is likely to be seen in the pop genre, that style of make-up didn’t really fit our video, so we didn’t really include it.

We also did interviews with 3 young girls asking them about the pop genre and what they expect. Here’s the video of their answers:

Their responses were mostly to do with the fact that they like video which are exciting and attention-grabbing. Doing this you would have to include mise-en-scene, editing and cinematography. One of the girls we asked said that to make the video interesting you would have to include visuals like eccentric colours and look. One person that we asked said they like music video that supported the lyrics. We especially wanted to include this into our music video because the message that the song has, is very significant and we wanted to get this message out to the public to expose the truths of the music industry. The last question we asked was about the type of music video genre. They both said narrative as they find watching a story is eye-catching and even more the song more appealing.

We showed our media class our music video so that they can give us feedback of what they. Even though the majority of the group are males which isn’t our target audience, the feedback we got did help us to get more perception of what they think our music video message is. It also would help us in the evaluation process and we can see where we should improve. The overall feedback of what they thought:

· Quite good comment on the music industry
· The portray of an record manager was comically genius
· Understood the main message and lyrics after 1 minute of watching the video
· The narrative side of the video is portrayed negatively on the music industry but also positively on the artist
· Overall Video -Timing could be better
· Good message
· The video is original as it’s tied into the lyrics and shows the message
· Entertaining

From the feedback we got, I feel that the class understood the message that we were trying to represent. I say this because they constantly went to back to the point on every question that the narrative was good message. One of the members of our class pointed out that people in the music industry are too quick to compromise to change their appearance; this goes back to our 2^nd character that is the girl who also goes to the same record manager and changes her appearance. Every single person thought the video gave message about the music industry. Bulmer and Katz theory, Use and Gratifications is about how media is used in different ways. For example this music video is clearly for information and entertainment as it tells the audience about the dark side of the music industry where they can transform a normal girl into a sex symbol, which is portray by a character in the video. Another theorist called Stuart Hall came up with a theory called Decoding/Encoding. He says that directors put things in their music videos for the audience to understand. We used Kerry as a girl that goes into the music industry and gets changed by the record label by getting sexualized.

Jake Nava is an English music video and film director. He has directed some one of world's most famous songs and commercials , including Adele 'Someone Like You' and Beyonce 'Single Ladies'. When researching Jake's videos, I have noticed what type of style he has. His videos seem to be quite dark whether it's narrative, performance or spectacle based, the video seems to have some kind of darkness to it. This can be shown through the camerawork, editing or mise-en-scene. For example in Beyonce's Single Ladies video, Jake has used editing to make the video quite dark by using the black and white effect. A lot of his videos are R&B songs which suggests that he prefers that genre of music. Within each video I have noticed that he likes to have close up on the artists. For example in Adele's video Someone Like You, Jake has focused strongly on Adele. This is because the song itself is very powerful so Jake didn't want to use a lot of mise-en-scene or editing to over power the song and has made the video very simple.
Another video Jake has done is Kanye West's video called Monster which is a spectacle based video. In this video Jake has made Kanye look like a very dominant character in the video. For example in one of the screenshot Kayne is the centre of the screen being grabbed and grasped by females. This portrays Kayne as being very important and suggests to the audience that everyone wants him which shows that Jake is also trying to show Kanye as being the traditional man. In the still he is has no clothes which makes the audience focus on his body, just like how most music videos that Jake has directed do but on female artist's videos like Britney Spears ' My Perogative' which is filmed in black and white and like the Beyonce in the Single Ladies video has very few clothing items on and being seen through the male gaze.